A senior politician in India’s ruling Congress Party has been kidnapped and
killed in an ambush by Maoist insurgents which left 25 dead.

An estimated 300 Maoist guerrillas, known as 'Naxalites’ attacked a convoy of senior Congress figures on Saturday afternoon as they returned from a rally in Chhattisgarh, one of India’s poorest states and the centre of a Maoist insurgency.

As the heavily-guarded convoy of around 40 cars drove through a densely forested area, the attackers blocked the road by felling trees. They then detonated a landmine and raked the vehicles with gunfire from the surrounding high ground for nearly an hour and a half.

The dead included local Congress leaders Mahendra Karma and former national cabinet minister VC Shukla, while Nand Kumar Patel, the Congress party state leader for Chhattisgarh, was initially reported missing and presumed kidnapped. Both Mr Patel and his son were found dead on Sunday morning, close to the scene of the attack.

The scale of the assault on a convoy protected by the highest security India offers caused shock across the political spectrum, and was denounced as an attack on democracy by both Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders. Narendra Modi, the nationalist chief minister of Gujarat and contender to be his party’s election campaign leader called for national unity in the fight against terrorism.

“The need of the hour is to stand together as a nation and vow to fight this menace that threatens our democracy,” he said. “The time has come to adopt policy of zero tolerance towards terrorism,” he added.

The prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and Congress Party president, Sonia Gandhi, visited the injured on Sunday and denounced the ambush as an 'cowardly’ attack on India’s democratic values.

“This is a cowardly act on the part of Maoists,” Mrs Ghandi told party supporters. “It is not an attack on Congress or its leaders, but an attack on democratic values.”

The Maoist rebellion in India’s south-eastern states has been gathering pace since it began in Naxalbari in 1967. It claims to represent poor and downtrodden tribal groups who have suffered land seizures and feel marginalised in India’s feudal hinterlands. The prime minister regards the Maoist insurgency as the greatest terrorist threat to India, especially in Chhattisgarh, Orissa and parts of West Bengal where it has some support. In April 2010 its fighters ambushed and killed 76 paramilitary policemen in Chhattisgarh.

The central government has struggled to contain the insurgency in Chhattisgarh, where local Congress leaders formed the controversial Salva Judum vigilante movement to arm villagers to resist the Naxalites. One of those killed in the ambush on Saturday was Mahendra Karma, the Salva Judum movement’s founder.

At least five policemen also lost their lives in the attack, which took place in the Jagdalpur area of Bastar district, 233 miles south of Raipur.